SwiftKey Brings New Colored Material Design Theme Pack to Users

SwiftKey users can head on into the SwiftKey Store this morning and grab the latest theme pack available. Inside, you will find a treasure trove of Material Design themes, including various colors for both Light and Dark themes.

Colors available include Green, Orange, Purple, and even Pink. These colors merely accent the already attractive Material Design theme, so if you were looking to spruce up your device, go check them out.

Although, if it was me, the stock Google keyboard with Material Design is already plenty hot for me.

If you are interested, make sure you have SwiftKey from Google Play installed, then open up the in-app store to view themes.

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Droid-Lifer

One of my favorite features of SwiftKey is when I switch to numbers page it puts it in a typical number-pad format which makes it extremely fast to input a lot of numbers. Is there another keyboard that offers this option? All other keyboards I’ve seen just have a line of numbers across the top.

tharealoc

I still wish they had better button spacing. Fleksy doesn’t have SwiftKey’s awesome prediction, but it is so much easier to use.

Charlie

Ive been using swiftkey for 3 years and have loved it since day one. But for some reason when I got the s5 it became really glitchy and makes my phone freeze up entirely. Why is that happening?

Anthony

touch jank

Trevor

I’d pay a buck or two if it was a set of all the material design skins, but not $1/skin. There are certainly some foreskin jokes in here somewhere, but I’m not feeling creative enough to generate one.

trwb

Just wondering, does the keyboard on windows phone require all these crazy permissions, like “full network access” like android does?

Neel

I wish google keyboard had the color theme for the keyboard. They should really allow users to pick colors for all of their apps, it would be so useful for users. Can’t possibly be tough to code that either

Chippah

Touchpal x has had this theme for months now, and its 1000 times better than swiftkey.

If you’re referring to the multicolored keyboard in the corner, SK has had one like that for at least a couple years now, called Neon.

mickeyB88

Gone through a few keyboards, SwiftKey being one of them. The lag got so bad it drove me to find other keyboards to try, but I always went grudgingly back to swiftkey. Surprisingly the stock keyboard on the G3 is pretty good (for me, anyway).

Razma

I literally turned off swiftkey for the first time since i got it years ago, 5 mins before this article came out, in favor of the stock google keyboard. Now i have to choose, cause apparently the stock keyboard is really nice now. And fast

Brian Walker

I’ve been a long time supporter of SwiftKey. I tried the stock Lollipop keyboard for a few days, but I keep swiping left to delete words, which obviously doesn’t work. If I’m being 100% honest, that’s a big part of why I’m still on SwiftKey. The predictions are great, of course, but that one gesture always makes me come back.

Vermin_Cain

I flashed Lollipop on my Nexus 7, but I am still waiting for the OTA for my Nexus 5. I’ll give it a couple more days.

Suicide_Note

My wife just got the notification for Lollipop on her N5 today, so hopefully you’ll get it soon, too.

JackMeOffski

Gay!!!

Brian Walker

Was that really necessary?

JackMeOffski

What? You don’t like the word Happy?

Brian Walker

Oh good, I’m glad we’re dealing with the very image of maturity.

JackMeOffski

Cock and Balls in your mouth, cock and balls in your mouth!

Suicide_Note

His username didn’t clue you in at the start?

John Johnson

No.

Tailor00

Pass.

Rashelle

They gave us paid customers 10 free themes, but heck, they could have let us pick the 10 we wanted instead of just assigning them…

BlynkOfAnEye

Have had Swiftkey for years, but was getting really fed up with the lag bringing up the keyboard every time. So, I’ve been using the stock Google keyboard for a week or so now, my thoughts (if anyone cares):
1) Swiftkey’s predictions and corrections (after many years of training) are just the bee’s knees. So good. I was a master with Flow. Stock’s flow seems to be good, but I’m definitely better in SwiftKey.
2) Stock keyboard is definitely more responsive, love the new material theme. Hate how SK wants to charge for it. If SwiftKey didn’t lag every time I brought up the keyboard, I’d never have thought to go away from it.
3) With stock, I hit B all the time instead of spacebar. Doesn’t seem smart enough to fix it automatically like SwiftKey does (yet?).
4) I like how with stock, hitting backspace once after an incorrectly-corrected word brings you back to your word as you originally typed it. However, I’m so used to the way SwiftKey deletes whole words on long-press backspace, I’m having trouble with the stock functionality.

I’m sure I’ll get used to stock over time, but I sure do miss some of the SK functionality!

Gr8Ray

Why are you even hitting space so much though? Just start swyping/flowing the next word, it puts the space in for you automatically when you lift off the last word.

BlynkOfAnEye

point taken. I knew that, but for some odd reason I guess I’ve been typing more the standard way recently. Flow comes and goes for me 🙂

I gave the Google Keyboard a trial for a couple of days but my biggest problem was not being able to change the size of the keyboard so I had to go back to Swiftkey. Having such a huge keyboard compared to the size I had set in Swiftkey I started so many words with the wrong letter, so of course it had horrible predictions and random letters. I was trying the Google Keyboard out because the of the lag of opening Swiftkey like you but to be honest I can only tell the difference on my old devices, they are about the same on my Moto X 2013. I don’t think I could get used to the stock keyboard anytime soon.

BlynkOfAnEye

one more: I love SK’s optional ARROW KEYS. but who knows, maybe I’m the only person out there that doesn’t like having to drag the cursor around to try to get to the right place. How do people deal with this???

I used the new lollipop keyboard for 3 days before going back to SwiftKey. SwiftKey’s prediction engine has me by the balls.

Suicide_Note

Thanks to the predictions, I can construct whole sentences without typing a word. I haven’t used any other keyboard that matches SK in the predictions department. Not even close.

Reginald Spence II

Upvoted you for sake of that “b” key. I do that all the time too. But Google Keyboard is lightning fast compared to Swiftkey in terms of responsiveness.

ultravisitor

Personally, I can’t get use any keyboard anymore that doesn’t have a dedicated number row. SwiftKey spoiled me in that respect.

Joel

Also tried the new L keyboard on Moto X for a few days and went back to SwiftKey. Prediction is clearly better

Picaso86

Is there any other keyboard app that would let me type in 2 different languages without changing the input? Swiftkey does this (even with Flow which is amazing)

Brian Russell

Swype can change languages quickly with a long press of the spacebar. Pretty convenient. I also like the cut-and-paste gestures in Swype, the easy switch to 10-key, and the fact that it’s the only keyboard I’ve found that lets me swipe my password in Keeper.

Picaso86

Thank for the tip, I’ll give it a try later.

Suicide_Note

I agree with you. The arrow keys are sooooo much better for navigating a field of text than trying to grab the cursor and drag it to wherever you want to place it.

Zach Wagner

I love the feel and look of the Google keyboard but no matter how many times I try Nothing matches the predictions and corrections like swiftkey

Gr8Ray

It’s funny, I keep hearing about these magical SwiftKey predictions, yet they are always complete junk for me. And I refuse to give them access to my email accounts so they can “improve” this.

Raven

I have only allowed it to learn from my texts, but it seems scarily intuitive to me. I often tend to type entire sentences with only 1 or 2 letters per word and then a tap on the suggestion. I usually only flow longer or more unusual words that I might need to use.

JayMars84

Agreed. Sometimes, its really good, but sometimes I’ll type something like “eigh” and theres no prediction up there for “eight.”

Gr8Ray

This is usually my experience. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even look up at the suggestion bar any more, because it just pisses me off.

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

I’ll pay for a lot of apps… Keyboard skins? I’d never do it.

AMGala

While I like Google Keyboard and swyping is better on it, I hate that the delete function does not pause at each word when holding down delete like it does in Swiftkey.

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

THIS….. One of my main gripes with Google Keyboard and part of the reason I keep going back to swift key. I like the new keyboard better. But I’m back on Swift Key on my Lilipop N5

guest

Lilipop lol.

Marc

Don’t laugh. Lilipop is 5.5. 🙂

nhizzat

Definitely a feature of SwiftKey that I want on Google Keyboard.

zach471

I prefer the look of the stock Google keyboard, but not the functionality. Small things like the G keyboard doesn’t automatically insert a space following a comma. Also, I typically hit the V or B key accidentally instead of the space bar. SK always corrects this better for me. Wish it wasn’t so, and maybe G keyboard would learn over time.

Trent Russell

Charging customers for keyboard skins who already paid for the app continues to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Dominick White

Yes that annoys me like hell

Patrick Smithopolis

They gave those of us who paid for the app several keyboards free.

Brian Klippel

Yes, and most of them were lame.

mickeyB88

Not only were they lame, but we already had those additional themes from when we paid for the app itself.

Yea, they gave out a free theme pack for paid users but oh well what can we do except choose not to buy it. I personally don’t care but I see where you’re coming from.

morgan boyle

they made the app free to everyone and offered a premium theme pack to those who already paid (or didnt pay via Amazon Free App Store). I think its a natural progression especially for an app that has probably plateaued a bit.

Cory Wilson

I paid for the app, twice actually with the now retired Swiftkey tablet. Overall nowadays I prefer Google keyboard but don’t feel ripped off at all. Got my moneys worth and they gave me a free theme pack. Think this way is better because now more people will try it

br_hermon

From a consumer viewpoint I get what you mean, but the old model just isn’t sustainable. Pay once for an app and that’s it, consumers got used to that when in reality we should have considered ourselves lucky. Just like unlimited data, one and done models just don’t work for the entity selling the app/service. If that business model were expected to stay in tact, you could expect developers to eventually abandon their products. No income = no development. If you ask me, we should still consider ourselves lucky. Developers could always go back to expecting us to pay for every new X.0 release. The infancy of the app ecosystem really spoiled us. Sure I’m with you, I’d love to pay once and be done, but we can’t realistically expect that any longer.

ultravisitor

Entitled babies who cry and whine over petty amounts of money relating to an app from which said babies have benefited profusely leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Teddy Chen

Google Keyboard FTW!

jbdan

While I think Swiftkey is great, the stock Google keyboard is that much better, for me

Teddy Chen

I agree, Google Keyboard is also a smoother experience. Although Swiftkey has better predictions, I notice that Google Keyboard is more accurate with swyping corrections.